by frog
A report released last week says the crunch will be upon us very soon, and Shell oil agrees. From the Guardian:
The report was issued today by the recently established UK industry taskforce on peak oil and energy security, a group of eight companies including transport firms Virgin, Stagecoach and FirstGroup, engineers Arup, architects Foster and Partners, and energy giant Scottish and Southern.
Entitled The Oil Crunch, the report argues that the risk of an early peak in oil production poses a bigger threat to UK society than tightening gas supplies, terrorism or the short-term impacts of climate change.
Stagecoach was the Scottish bus company that bled our kiwi city councils dry supplying public tranpsort services, until the councils started demanding ridiculous things like integrated ticketing.
The Energy Bulletin quotes the salient points from the report, which sum it all up better than I could:
We sought two opinions on oil-supply risk, one from an oil-industry expert known as a leading advocate of the early-peak scenario, and the second from Royal Dutch Shell, who we expected might advocate a more sanguine prognosis. In our first risk opinion, Peak Oil Consulting2 presents an analysis pointing to a peak in global oil production in the period 2011-2013. His core argument is that the problem is not so much about reserves, as the timely bringing on stream of new flow capacity to replace the depletion of existing capacity. The “easy oil” that makes up most of existing capacity is declining fast, and the new capacity coming on stream – often from “not-so-easy” oil – will not be replacing it fast enough from 2011 onwards.
In our second risk opinion, Shell argues that we indeed face an “easy oil” supply gap, but should think not of “peak” production, rather “plateau” production, with accompanying tensions as the demand for energy continues to surge. The global supply of oil will flatten by 2015, in Shell’s view, and if the oil industry globally is to maintain hydrocarbons supply on this plateau, very heavy investment will be required in ultradeep water, pre-salt layers, tight gas, coal-bed methane,3 in the Canadian tar sands and other areas of unconventional oil production. We find it of great concern that both our risk opinion-providers agree that the age of “easy oil” is over. If so, fast-growing alternative energy supplies become imperative, even if production flattens in 2015 as Shell suggests.
While others continue to point to the recent drop in oil prices as proof that the Greens are non compos mentis when it comes to oil, it seems that internationally, big business is waking up to what we have been saying all along. Itś not the end of oil, itś the end of cheap oil. Somehow, I think that they will soon be saying that about global average tempaerature, too.
Published in Environment & Resource Management by frog on Tue, November 4th, 2008
Tags: crunch, energy bulletin, gaurdian, oil, peak
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
This is one of my frustrations with the Green Party.
As far back as 2000 many Green Party people (including Jeanette) knew all about peak oil, however the Green Party has only relatively recently publicly got with the programme. Five years ago the Green Party website had zero peak oil content.
What the Green Party should by now realise is that peak oil is the only game in town, and the environmental issue with the greatest timescale pressures, and the possibility of turning the most ugly.
Yet still all we hear about is stuff that is distinctly less pressing… Climate change can wait, we have far more disasterous things to worry about.
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I disagree dbuckley. Jeanette and the Greens have been all over the Peak Oil issue for years. We just failed to get any media about it because, as I said in the post, we were passed off as non compos Mentis. Pity people weren´t listening then and are still not listening now. Did this report get any press in NZ? Absolutely not.
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Actually, dbuckley, the calamity howlers in the environmental movement have been wailing about Peak Oil for decades now, going back to the early Seventies.
All this hysteria about Peak Oil is much ado about nothing.
Here’s a quote from Dr John Parker, former associate professor in the University of Otago Department of Economics:
“Peak Oil arguments lack substance because they tend to ignore the rationing function of markets and their power to induce innovation.”
Touche. The problem with the Greens is they don’t understand basic economics, and therefore have no grasp of how markets work.
Bad science, bad economics and paranoia are a dangerous mix. And this is exactly the package the Greens are offering through their environmental agenda.
Let me finish with Dr Parker’s final remarks (in the article “The End of Oil? Some Optimistic Musings”):
“Is oil going to continue to skyrocket in price and then run out? The answer is no. Price rises will be held back by increases in the supply of oil and the arrival of substitutes. Induced technological change will rescue us. To argue otherwise is to suggest that oil is unique relative to all other resources in the world and cannot be replaced, and also that human ingenuity will fail us. Like the more dire predictions of Peak Oil, this is not realistic.”
What a devastating refutation of the Peak Oil theory.
The problem is the Greens do believe that human ingenuity will fail us. The Greens think we’re too dumb to make the right decisions regarding bringing up our kids, choosing the right lightbulb, how long to shower, and how many kids to have. As a corollary, we are therefore too dumb to devise alternatives to oil as well.
And EVEN IF Peak Oil were a reality, shouldn’t the Greens be applauding this eventuality? After all, this fits with their car-bashing agenda. And this means we will all be riding around in our bikes in a road-less utopia.
Every way you look at it, the Greens’ environmental beliefs are illogical and convoluted at best, and intellectually dishonest and economically destructive at worst.
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Indeed.
The Greens like to pretend alt powered cars aren’t a solution. Their argument against roading development is that there will be fewer cars. Why? Because oil is running out. Yet, we don’t need oil to power cars, even if oil is running out, which is debatable.
But no. THEIR scenario is the ONLY plausible one (hard for them to ditch it, of course, as it’s hard to admit having been wrong since the 1970s), and as you rightly point out, the Green stance is based on bad science and bad logic.
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Well Shawn, since I’ve obviously got nothing to worry about, let me just note that that you argue that “The problem with the Greens is they don’t understand basic economics, and therefore have no grasp of how markets work”
Lets ignore for a moment I’m not a Green, but focus on the rest of the assertion, and note that we’re in the middle of an illustration of how the markets work, right now. And about $3TUSD says they couldn’t get themselves out of a mess of their own creating. Astounding even Greenspan, who was in his tenure maybe the greatest advocate of the free market.
And yes, the argument that we can invent our way out of this impeding mess is not baseless but not without flaws. Theres stuff we can do, but if the forcast rate of output deline is accurate, then what we can do will simply not occur fast enough. Just like gravity, the laws of thermodynamics stay in full effect, even when the market wants them not to.
The problem isn’t that the Greens dont understand economics (on which I dont have an opinion), the problem is they dont actually understand the environment. Fiddles are played whilst Rome burns.
And Frog – the GP website had no mention of peak oil on it in 2003. As I said, theres lots of evidence that members of the GP knew, but you wouldn’t have known that from the website of the time. This was a source of frustration to many people back then, the simple question, why dont the Green Party get “it”?
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Shawn, I’ll be voting for Act this election because I back liberal social policies and the free market, however;
Peak oil, as you must surely be aware, is foremost a product of the realities of geology and oil extraction methods.
You are aware that the USA went through peak oil in 1970 and that America’s oil production has fallen steadily since then, despite Gulf and Alaskan oil discoveries?
You are aware that many other countries eg, Mexico, UK, Indonesia have also experienced their own peak oil?
The free market is a terrific mechanism Shawn, but it’s not miraculous, even with the free market we must deal with the physical realities of the world we live on.
Human ingenuity is also a terrific mechanism, but it also doesn’t miraculously solve all problems, surely you’ve noticed this?
Oil is a fantastic substance, the fact that you and I are unable to devise alternatives isn’t because we’re dumb, it’s because there is no substance like oil, in terms of cost versatility, energy density, and availability, on the planet.
I think we could get through peak oil without disasterous consequences, but only if markets recognise the problem in time and only if politicians allow the implementation of the nessesary solutions, unfortunately politics has made the rapid development and implementation of the most economic alternative energy sources impossible in much on the world.
You praise human ingenuity, sadly too often we use our ingenuity to f**k ourselves over.
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Let the Banks, Finance Companies and Brokerages fail. No problem! Then we can have the fun of reinventing society!
All our money will vanish, as will that of businesses and government. No one will get paid, but hey, no problem, because there will be no mechanism, other than cash, by which to pay any one for any thing! No point putting a dollar price on a loaf of bread if all anyone has got is plastic! We have to create a new form of, and structure for, valuata! Great eh! Anyone want to swap a gallon of JB Black Label for my three lettuce?
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Andrew W – methinks you should consider voting Green – what you’ve just posted seems much more closely aligned to Green thinking than ACT. The problem with ACT’s invisible hand is that it has no brain – it cannot plan.
Sure, the market will respond to resources beginning to run out – eventually. But what damage to society and to the environment is done while the brainless invisible hand catches up?
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The point, Dave S, is that the markets got themselves into a position where they could no longer function, and needed to be rescued / restarted / bailed out, pick your terminology.
The one thing that didn’t happen is that the markets fixed it.
Therefore it is truly the case that the solution can never be “leave it to the markets” because under some circumstances, the markets fail to deliver a workable solution. My suspicion is that the markets can’t fix big problems, and can’t fix fast moving problems.
Of course, classical free-market economics tell us that letting “Banks, Finance Companies and Brokerages fail” is exactly what the correct response is as that will clear the “problem”, freeing the playing field for new entrants to replace the old. However painful that may be.
There is a school of thought that says the current activities have merely postponed the problems and that financial disaster may still occur. Lets hope they’re very wrong, ay.
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Andrew W;
Yes, we go use our ingenuity to screw ourselves over. But we learn from our mistakes.
The biggest mistake of the US bailout of the financial sector is that it does not allow the market to recognise the magnitude of the crisis.
When you take away the consequences, the mistake will manifest itself again.
I didn’t say the free market is the panacea to all of this world’s problems. What I do believe is what is it a wonderful tool that is much maligned by ideologues on the Left who either have no capacity to fathom the market’s abilities, or they simply wish to subvert the intellectual debate about markets for their own ends/furthering their personal agendas.
Good on you for voting ACT, and recognising that social liberalism and economic liberalism go hand in hand.
(It took me 7 years to realise this.)
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The problem for you Toad, is you believe you can plan and can control, I’m sorry but Keynesian economics doesn’t work and neither does Friedman. You can’t control the economy Toad.
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How can a person be socially liberal and not economically liberal they go hand in hand.
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Exactly. But the enlightened are few and far between.
And that’s why 98% of the country doesn’t vote ACT.
We have a world to win.
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The right wingers profess minimum government interference when it comes to things like welfare (let poor people starve,) but when it comes to the bankers lets give them government guarantees so we don’t dent their overseas owners profits! It really is straight support the rich and screw the poor, no matter what.
The sun rises and sets, people are born, live they their lives and die, and oil is peaking. Peak oil will change our way of life. Some people deny it like those who still think the earth is flat.
We have a couple of choices as to how to deal with it. We can make some changes to our energy use (moving to renewables, efficiency measures, public transport infrastructure etc.) at very low (or no) cost now, and we’ll be little bothered when oil supply reductions really start to bite. Or we can do nothing, and oil shortages will cripple us.
To reiterate a point, ingenuity and substitution are what the greens use and base their practical alternatives on, unlike most of the other parties who stick their head in the sand and rely on blind faith. Of course Labour are even worse, taxing us for motorway building!
ACT no doubt favour a return to poverty of most of the population as long as the bankers are OK.
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No chance Toad, the watermelon analogy is too apt, as you’ve demonstrated with your enthusiasm to “plan” ie run other peoples lives.
Tell me, would you people run the country on a standard 5 year plan like the USSR?
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“But the enlightened are few and far between. And that’s why 98% of the country doesn’t vote ACT.”
that’s it only the top 2% of geniuses. whatever. the reason so few people vote act is only a small percentage of people earn enough for it to make economic sense.
the free market is not free it is very expensive…
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““plan” ie run other peoples lives.”
you’re against having a plan?
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Andrew W – is your last name ‘watermelon’? Is that why you’re clinging to the tired, dull, uninspiring, borrowed, done to death cliche? Think your own thoughts, Andrew! (Here’s a cliched term – actoid. I wouldn’t use it)
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You took 7 years to make a mistake? Man… even elephants don’t have a gestation period that long.
BJ
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“you’re against having a plan?”
I’m against centralised planning, I’m against other people planning how they’re going to make me live my life their way.
I’m against monopolies of any sort.
“…is your last name ‘watermelon’?…” “Think your own thoughts, Andrew!”
The reason why it’s a “done to death cliche” is that there’s a whole lot of truth to it, you know, if the Greens stuck to green issues and social liberalism I could support them, trouble is that people like Bradford Kedgley and locke just have to poke their noses into everything and everyone elses lives.
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To succeed, you need a vision, goals and a plan. If a person wants to be successful, they need to plan. If a business wants to be successful, it needs to plan. If a government wants to be successful, it needs to plan.
The Greens have a vision for a better earth. We have goals designed to successfully navigate peal oil and climate change. We have a plan.
ACT also have a plan, just one they won’t admit to 98% or 99% of the population.
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Peak Oil arguments lack substance because they tend to ignore the rationing function of markets and their power to induce innovation.
Horsesht on a shingle… Peak oil has absolutely NOTHING to do with the rationing function of markets (economics). It has to do with the ability to pump oil out of the ground fast enough to feed the market (engineering). It says that the price of oil (real price, not speculative price) will increase as it becomes increasingly difficult to recover each new barrel. As it becomes more expensive it will become less desireable and people WILL look for substitutes. Only there’s one FATAL catch. Oil based energy is the cheapest, easiest, most easily exported energy the human species has ever harnessed. ANY substitute costs more and will cost more, than it did last decade AND the decade before.that. That takes out a lot of the dynamic of growth we got used to.
Energy supplies will be short while we are trying to get substitutes of any sort on line. Worse, some people will elect to burn coal as a substitute, you might even be one of them.
Economists sneer at engineers (who believe in the laws thermodynamics) and ecologists (who believe in living within your means). They favour their assumption of unlimited physical supply and substitution.
Unfortunately for “innovation” there has never been an innovation that actually circumvented thermodynamics and there has never been an innovation capable of creating another planetary atmosphere if we fnck this one up. The problem for people who accept the words of economists at face value is that the economy is a subset of the ecology.
This is what we have to look forward to in terms of energy Shawn. It isn’t a pretty sight. It doesn’t even begin to cover some of the added downsides of burning the stuff we burn every day to fuel the “growth” that fractional-reserve-debt-based fiat currencies (which are used by all of the OECD) demand.
http://www.paulchefurka.ca/WEAP2/WEAP2.html
Innovate? Sure. At every possible opportunity, but the growth is exponential and we who do the innovating can’t match it. Innovations come as step functions and as hard as we work for each of them, we can’t predict OR demand any of them. When innovation fails us, civilizations die. Try Diamond’s book “Collapse”. Now we’re doing the same stupid experiment with the only planet we own. Oh yeah, this is SURE to end well…. \sarcasm
BJ
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Any plan needs to be measured against something, some sort of benchmark, in a free market a business can measure the success of its strategies against other businesses, with a state monopoly there is no benchmark, the planners convince themselves that whatever they’re doing is working, when they finally face the reality that the plan isn’t working they blame everyone else. There really is almost no limit to human self-deception in the name of a cause.
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I think this is a very polarised discussion.
On the one hand you have the right very foolishly beleiving you can continue to pump air into a bubble without fear of it bursting, and on the other we have the greens claiming to have all the answers, while focussing strongly on banning everything from smacking to lightbulbs and now advocating for gay marrige!!
The Greens may eventually be able to say “I told you so” re peak oil, but will have been so sidetracked by their social agenda that they will have forgotten to do anything about it!
Drop the radicals and start developing strong policy and strategy for a tranistion to true sustainability, otherwise all you are is a very noisy (and irritating) sounding gong.
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Actually, a lot of greens (as well as Greens) are doing something about peak oil.
We’re using less private transport.
We’re supporting initiatives in our neighbourhoods to support local businesses, not driving to Malls in far-away suburbs/towns.
We’re supporting community gardens, and re-planting greenbelts.
We’re reducing our dependance on petro-chemical by-products, such as plastics (eg: refusing supermarket plastic bags), not using fertisilisers from petrochemicals.
We’re reducing waste, recycling resources, and researching sustainable pathways for growth and community welfare.
We’re so far out in front of the rest of you that you can’t see us, so you don’t know what’s happening right in your own backyards, in the major urban centres.
When the time comes, we will be the ones who have systems in place to teach sustainability from, and you will benefit, whether you like it now or not.
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“We’re so far out in front of the rest of you that you can’t see us, so you don’t know what’s happening right in your own backyards, in the major urban centres.
When the time comes, we will be the ones who have systems in place to teach sustainability from, and you will benefit, whether you like it now or not.”
Actually you are quite wrong, I am making progress in all the areas you have mentioned and have a commitment to living a trully sustainable lifestyle.
Once again you assume the typical “greenies” are the only people interested in not crapping in their own nest.
I am involved in a number of environmental projects at the moment and have some planned that have a real chance at changing attitudes in my entire region.
Every where I go people are concerned that I am a “greenie”, and what do you think their concerns are concerns based on?, environmental stewardship? nope, sustainability? nope, they always mention the social engineering and issues that have nothing to do with true sustainability.
The radicals in the green movement are in reality only making a transition to sustainability harder. Ditch the Sue Bradfords and Kevin Hagues and you will find the public will trust you, if you don’t you risk becomming irrelevant.
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Central planning would be nothing short of a disaster as a response to the inevitable decline in oil production.
Do you think Soviet planners were stupid when they disastrously mismanaged their economy, and that at a time of cheap oil? Of course not. So what makes you think you can do any better, and with all the limitless extra uncertainties of decling oil supplies?
The fact is that central planning can never work because the necessary information is distributed across the entire economy, and freely emerging prices convey vital information to the world. Do you really think you can replace a natural system with its infinate feedbacks with a politically appointed committee?
It’s not a question of getting really clever people to do the job; it literally cannot be done (and remember, this is all about politics, so those who actually end up with the power and the patronage will be people of the calibre of Winston Peters.)
Only the most ignorant, or those who envisage themselves in the positions of power, could possibly advocate such madness.
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Oh good, I’m pleased to hear that oil will not run out.
Now all we are arguing about is whether it will become expensive.
What sort of price would be considered expensive? $50, $100, $150? Maybe $300?
The problem is that even at $100 all sorts of hair-brained schemes become viable. The main problem for oil is that it takes years (perhaps 10) to get an oil well up and running, and lots of money too. For example, I remember reading about one oil well in US waters which costs about $250,000 per day to run, has done for a few years, and is still 18 months away from producing a drop of oil. This sort of investment can only be understanding by those whose profits are measured in the billions, and then only when they are pretty sure that we are running out.
If Shell genuinely think we are running out of oil, then I’m sure they will increase their exploration efforts. That said, 90% of the world’s oil supply is controlled by dodgy countries anyway. Short of invading and installing a new government, Shell’s options are limited.
In the end, self interest will ensure that oil is supplied. I very much doubt we will see prices of $200, perhaps ever.
Also see my little post
http://savethehumans.typepad.com/weblog/2008/11/peak-oil-an-att.html
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Great news Optimist, you haven’t died yet so obviously you never will!
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Who said anything about central planning? Planning merely means thinking ahead using the information at hand – which can take place at any level of society. Obviously, many individuals (like Shunda) already do, Greens or not. Anyone who grows a garden engages in planning – you can’t suddenly decide you’d like home-grown apples or carrots, you have to think ahead, make decisions, take action.
The Transition Town movement is an example of communities working together to enable a larger number of people to cope with the changes that we can see coming. Our community is currently coming together to clean up our Harbour – a huge, long-term, collaborative planning, research and action exercise. No quick technical fix for years of mismanagement and pollution.
You only need central planning for big infrastructure like roads, rail, telecommunications, power and so forth.
It’s about appropriate planning, which is a basic Green tenet. I get pretty sick of people wilfully and erroneously describing Greens as some kind of communists and using that as a reason to ignore everything else we do that they allegedly agree with.
If you can’t debate properly, please don’t keep coming up with the same old nonsense, just read and think. Greens are not trying to destroy society, business or interfere in individuals’ lives – we are trying to engage people in thinking about the many levels of decision-making. Sure, we don’t know everything or get everything right – it is a process of thinking about the future, about having a vision of a society that tries to understand its relationship with the finite world it lives on.
And it requires communication between people – and planning.
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Anyway I thought peak oil was this year…now it is in 5 years?
Come on guys. Your credibility is in tatters on this one. Why don’t you go back to worrying about pollution and leave economics to the market?
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Touche.
Unfortunately, Optimist, many Greenies believe in concepts like this:
“Peak oil has absolutely NOTHING to do with the rationing function of markets (economics). It has to do with the ability to pump oil out of the ground fast enough to feed the market (engineering).”
We were also told petrol will hit $3.00 a litre by the end of this year.
That’s the problem when the Greens try and be Nostradamus.
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Frog has stopped mentioning the price of oil so much recently, after being very bullish on the topic….
Much like a futures trader. Who was dead wrong.
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Janine,
You seem to be arguing for business as usual.
We are on the same side.
The question, then, is why does the Green Party keep posting stuff about peak oil on their blog if the appropriate response is to carry on as before? Seems to me they are trying to use it as an excuse to grab still more power for the state.
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“Much like a futures trader. Who was dead wrong.”
Just perhaps, the world wide financial sector melt down that’s put the US and others into recession had something to do with it?
“You seem to be arguing for business as usual.”
We’re reading different posts if that’s what you made of it.
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>>put the US and others into recession had something to do with it?
Hence the problem with trying to predict the future.
They’ll be wrong about the temperature, as well….
And cars…
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Planning – The substitution of error for chance.
Yup… you quote me correctly, because that is what “peak oil” means. It means that it is just not going to come out of the ground faster… yeah… I downplay the fact that if someone paid a LOT of money and did extremely irrational things to subsidize the process so that the resulting prices never got to the consumers… it is actually possible that it could exceed the level of 2005… though even at prices of $250 per barrel, the production would almost certainly NOT attain those heights. The depletion of the EASY oil is happening too fast.
However, I also warned Frog on the same thread where prices were being touted, that the recession that was coming would drive the price back down. I expected the bottom to be closer to $80. I am satisfied with my accuracy at that range. However, the end result is the same.
More will not be pumped at any price that the economy can handle.
If demand rises the price will go up but it will never drive production to match anything like the demand we used to have. Consider the complete collapse of the automotive sector. The Volvo truck news was a hell of a shock… even to me. The US automakers are, all three of them, flirting with outright bankruptcy. Vehicles are NOT going to be replaced with new during this financial “event” .
The cost to the country of this “replacement” is going to be several additional years of lost production capacity, lost money and lost jobs. For the economist this is a picture of some curves crossing each other and the magical substitution of a different way to fuel transport.
For the engineer assigned to perform the magic this is a massive alteration of infrastructure and vehicle stock built up over the past 80 years to support the transport industry. In other words, the cost of the change is not negligible. The price of oil has to be quite high to justify starting it… people will die on account of it and if it is not started BEFORE it is needed to get online with the alternative fuels, it will take long years to complete while there is simply NO substitute available.
So much for the market making it right on the night.
For NZ this is less difficult to cope with than for the bigger guys. We have natural gas fields, and snatching the flare-off gas from Maui and elsewhere in our little patch would probably give us additional rope for our hanging. Engineering that capture takes a fair whack of time and changes as well.
None of it gets done by the market, which has no anticipatory functions that would allow it to detect the need for the changes.
It’ll be interesting to see how National reacts to a liberal USA though.
respectfully
BJ
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So Wat, Optomist and Shawn think that the forecasters at Goldman Sachs, Capital Economics and Merrill Lynch don’t understand market economics?
Or maybe they’re too busy arguing in favour of market miracles to have time to read expert market analysis.
http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/investing-and-markets/article.html?in_article_id=456109&in_page_id=3
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BluePeter: “Hence the problem with trying to predict the future.
They’ll be wrong about the temperature, as well….
And cars…”
Classic
BJ: “None of it gets done by the market, which has no anticipatory functions that would allow it to detect the need for the changes.”
Businessmen are as capable of anticipating the future as politicians.
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Janine Said: “Who said anything about central planning? Planning merely means thinking ahead using the information at hand – which can take place at any level of society.”
It’s central planning when central government does it, I try to explain above why that’s so different from other people planning : November 4th, 2008 at 6:56 pm
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BJ,
Every business I have worked in had Starategic Planning by senior management.
This looked forward for either 3 or 5 years.
My part was the market where demographics and product forecast were presented. Others did infastructure, finance, HR, etc.
Business does this strategic planning for a very simple reason. To stay alive.
Stategic plans were reviewed quaterly in a macro view and against budget every month.
I would say that the government is actually very BAD at stategic planning. Simply because the systems are not in place.
Even if the systems were in place, the politicians would not take a blind bit of difference to understand the objectives in a strategic plan nor have the gumption to implement any action plan (even if it meant saving the planet) if they could lose votes on it.
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Interesting discussion here about how oil, the recession and the credit crunch are related:
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/4727#more
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Gerrit
Three years isn’t long enough and five is barely long enough. Government HAS to take a longer view of things. Consider the job that has to be done to prepare us, even to capture natural gas, manufacture methane, distribute it and convert vehicles to use it… the LEAST disruptive possible response to peak oil.
That’s an effort that, if started when price signals appear in the market and businesses see the opportunities, will be completed a good 5 years too late for the country.
Businesses do not do a notably better job of strategic planning than governments, even really big businesses. We’ve seen how well the banks and the US Auto Industry have done.
SOME businesses do OK, but the key here is that there is NO business that troubles itself with the timescale we are discussing, and no business going into this, that is really turning to a CH4 based future. There is one IIRC, that is working on electrical conversions, but that is the more difficult option for the nation. The conversions are larger and more difficult and that infrastructure is even less easily developed.
If government is very BAD at strategic planning, it is at least the place where such planning needs to be done for the nation as a whole and it is no worse than the business community on the timescales involved.
respectfully
BJ
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BJ, reality.
In a democracy it’s the majority that determines who governs, it takes the majority of a population to realise that peak oil is real and upon us, before a government is elected to address it.
As an aside this issue actually demonstrates why in unstable times dictatorships can work where democracy fails, democracy is decision making by committee, dictatorship allows a leader to act to address a problem in the most rapid and forceful manner, though nine times out of ten that power is abused.
Businesses that are real stars, grow rapidly and are innovative effectively operate as a dictatorship with one strong leader.
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Disagree BJ on the time frames.
Too long a planning phase and any project becomes a camel.
As for natural gas for cars. Been done already, I’m not sure if you were in New Zealand when CNG was bought on stream. But that process from conception to implementation was way less then three years.
The water removal processing, the pipelines, the retail distribution chains and infastructure, the car conversions, etc. were in place quick smart.
In fact the infastructure for cng conversions is pretty much still in place, ready for another turn at bat.
You see BJ. If you say we will take ten years to plan, it will take ten years.
If yuo say, you have three years now get it done, it will be done.
Attitude is important. And a desire.
Remember strategic plans are reviewed ALL the time and old strategies dumped and new ones added as the world changes.
I respectfully seggust that NO-ONE can forsee 30 years out and plan for it today.
Just look back 30 years and tell me you could have predicted computer power reaching a zenith today.
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dbuckley
I think we fight to agree!
I really do believe that letting the system collapse, and finding a new one (as happened after WW1 when the World Bank and IMF were created) is the right thing to do. It would force us (humans) to find a way of dealing with each other that didn’t allow for speculators to wreck the world for the sake of their Bentleys.
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